Common as Muck!: The Autobiography of Roy 'Chubby' Brown (33 page)

We were stopping at the De Vere, the best hotel in Blackpool. Waiting at the reception desk for my key, Peter standing beside me holding my bags, I was nearly knocked off my feet when this huge lad crept up behind us and jumped on my back.

‘Chubby Brown!’ he shouted. ‘You fucking big fat cunt.’

‘Yeah, hello,’ I said. ‘Just keep your language down, please. There’s girls behind the reception.’ I thought he was just another over-friendly, pissed-up fan.

‘You big fat fucking bastard …’

‘Listen, we’ve established what I am,’ I said. ‘Could you just keep your language down, please?’

‘What are you going to do about it?’ he said. ‘You big bastard.’

He walked towards me as if he was going to throw his arm round my shoulders, but I was worried that he had more violent intentions than giving me a friendly hug. I put my hand out to push him away. ‘Look, I’m not in the mood,’ I said. ‘Leave us alone.’

As I turned around to pick up one of my bags, the lad swung his fist around and punched me smack in the mouth. He must have been wearing a ring with a spike because his punch went straight through my lip and into my gum. Blood squirted everywhere. I was shocked. I hadn’t expected it. It was like being knocked down by a car.

‘Fucking hell,’ Peter said. ‘Look at your gob!’

I touched my swollen lip and looked down. Blood was running down the front of my T-shirt. ‘You fucking bastard!’ I shouted and ran after the lad, who ran out of the door and got away. But his mates, about a dozen fellas who were drinking in the bar, stood up as one.

‘Come on, then!’ they shouted. ‘Come and get it, you fat cunt!’

Fists flew everywhere and Pete took most of the punches. He was bitten around the head and hands, kicked and punched, all just to protect me. The hotel security turned up, saw how vicious these lads were and ran off, so I picked up a table in the foyer and smashed it against the lads to get them off Peter. Then I grabbed a vase and broke it over one of the attackers’
heads. Kicking the lad as he dropped to the floor, I shouted to Peter to get out of it quick. We ran to the lift, jumped inside it and managed to get the door shut while the dozen lads tried to pull us out.

Arriving at the top floor, we found a phone in a corridor and rang down to reception. ‘It’s Chubby,’ I said breathlessly. ‘I’m bleeding pretty badly and so is my mate. I’m going to have to get out of this hotel and get him to hospital.’

‘We’ve sent for an ambulance,’ the receptionist said ‘The police are here now.’

The coppers had rounded up the attackers by the time we got down to reception. ‘Do you know which one did it?’ said one of the bluebottles.

‘No, but if I see him again,’ I said, ‘I’ll know him.’

The copper explained that our assailants were showmen from a travelling fair associated with some of the amusement arcade owners in Blackpool. One of them had a birthday, so they’d booked up the De Vere and commandeered the place with little respect for anyone or anything else in the vicinity. They’d driven cars across flower beds and the police had found stolen credit cards on the showmen they’d arrested.

Pete and I went to hospital. A doctor put a stitch in my face and four stitches in Peter’s head. Then we went back to the hotel, collected our gear and went home. I cancelled the show, something I do very rarely. I was that upset about it.

A couple of years later, Peter and I stopped at another hotel in another seaside town. There were two lads at the bar, both with earrings and both a bit Jack the lad. ‘Hiya, Chubby,’ they said.

‘Hi. All right?’

‘We’re coming down to see you tonight. It was great last year.’

‘Oh, smashing.’

‘Do you want a drink?’

‘Aye.’ We got talking.

‘You know, you’re not the bloke I thought you were,’ one of them said.

‘How d’you mean?’

‘That night at the De Vere that you had a fight, I was there. I thought you were an animal. I’ve never seen anybody go mad like that.’

‘You were there?’

‘Yeah, I’m a showman.’

‘So were you involved in the fight?’

‘No. I kept out of it.’

‘So who were they?’

‘You don’t want to know …’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘No, I’d forget it if I was you. If there is six of you, there’ll be eight of them. If there is ten of you, there’ll be twelve of them. And they are all fist fighters. They’ll come from miles around to have a go at you, so why don’t you just forget it, it’s all over and done with now.’

‘You actually know the lad with the ring?’

‘Yeah. He’s an absolute cunt. And so is his family.’

‘Where are they from?’

‘Here. They own all the amusements on the seafront.’

Sometimes it’s best not knowing. That lad in the De Vere marked me for life. And for nothing but a stupid bit of horseplay. When I get a tan, the scar he gave me on my lip stays white. I’m still as mad as blazes, but I had to realise it was time to put it behind me, else I’d carry the anger for ever.

Although incidents such as the fight weren’t commonplace with Pete, there were dozens of other occasions when he came to my rescue, particularly as Pete looked very similar to me and could often pretend that he
was
me when I had a bit of trouble. And whenever something funny happened, Pete was also usually there.

We were staying in a pro digs in Wales that we called Pansey’s Down because we couldn’t pronounce its proper Welsh name. Staggering in, laden with bags, we dinged the bell at the reception desk. This fella appeared, six foot four and thin as a rake.

‘
What?
’ he said.

‘Chubby Brown, Peter Richardson …’

‘
Yeeees?
What do you want?’

‘We booked in.’

‘
Did you now?
When did you book?’

‘Our office will have booked it.’

‘Are you sure?’

Peter and I looked at each other. This fella didn’t have the moustache, but in every other way he was just like Basil Fawlty, so much so that it was like he was doing an impression.

‘Right. Right,’ he said. ‘I see … Yes … Have you much luggage?’

‘Yes, lots.’

‘Well, you’ll have to carry it yourselves. No porter.’ We didn’t know whether to laugh or not. ‘Right! That’s your key. OK? Your key.’

‘What number’s my room?’ I said.

‘Are you blind?’

‘No.’

‘Well, can’t you see it’s number fourteen?’

We went to our rooms, then met in the lounge, where the Basil Fawlty fella was serving behind the bar. He did everything in that hotel – reception, room service, waiter in the dining room and barman.

‘What’s everybody having?’ I said.

‘What’s the beer?’ said Peter.

‘
Could
you make your mind up?’ the Basil Fawlty fella said. ‘I haven’t got all day.’

‘Would anyone like some crisps?’ I asked Peter and some of the other performers we knew in the lounge.

‘
Crisps?
’ the Basil Fawlty fella said. ‘You want
crisps?
We’ve got two flavours. Take it or leave it. It’s up to you.’

As he passed me the crisps, I noticed he had a plaster on his finger.

‘What happened there?’ I said.

‘
What?
’

‘What happened to your finger?’

‘Why don’t you ask
him
?’

‘Who?’

‘
Him
. In the cage.’

As if his manner wasn’t enough to convince you he was John Cleese, a sad-looking parrot sat in a cage at the end of the bar.

‘The parrot bit your finger?’

‘Yes. And he lived to regret it.’

‘Oh, right.’

‘He was squawking. Squawking all the time.
Squawking
. Couldn’t talk to the customers. Couldn’t hear myself think. So I opened that window there. And I opened the cage and I shook the cage and I said go!
Fuck off!
I don’t want you any more. Get lost!’

‘Christ, what happened?’

‘He flew out the window. I thought that was the last I’d see of him and the bastard flew back in that one.’ He pointed at the other window, further along the wall. ‘I didn’t have the heart to throw him out again so I put him back in the cage. He fucking bit me!’

We were crying with laughter.

‘Look!’ he said. ‘Fucking bit me! I’ll get him back.’

At another hotel in Skipton, Pete and I stayed up late in the bar with Kay Rouselle, a jazz singer who worked with a six-piece band. Kay was lovely, one of the lads who liked a drink, a cigarette
and a shag. She could fart like the rest of us. And she could handle the blokes. She always used to say she could fuck all night.

Whenever we worked at the same venue, Kay would introduce me on stage; she really knew how to deal with hecklers. If any of the lads shouted ‘Get your tits out!’ Kay always had a reply. ‘You wouldn’t know what to do with them,’ she’d snap. Or: ‘Go home, your mother’s waiting there for you. It’s time for your breast feed.’

Peter and I were sat in the lounge at the Skipton hotel having a drink with Kay when we noticed a bloke at the end of the bar who kept staring at her. He turned out to be the manager and bought us all a drink. ‘Not a bad bloke,’ Kay said after the manager had bought us a second drink. ‘Quite handsome.’

The manager only had eyes for Kay, but then, she was the only bit of skirt there. ‘Are you married to any of these lads?’ he said.

‘Oh no, my husband is on the
QE2
,’ Kay said. ‘He’s a trumpet player.’

I thought no more of it and went to bed around half past one. Next morning, we were all sitting at breakfast when Kay walked into the dining room. Sashaying through the room, a fur coat over her shoulder, she winked at a group of us sitting at a big table.

‘Morning, lads,’ she said, smiling.

‘Morning, Kay,’ we said.

‘There won’t be a bill this morning,’ she said with a dirty smirk on her face. She’d obviously spent the night with the manager. ‘No charge after last night.’ And she was right – there was nowt to pay.

Peter was invaluable in those days. He shared the laughs and he helped fend off the trouble but, more significantly, he was there when things got really miserable. And miserable would
have been a compliment to some of the clubs I played in those dark days. The worst of all was a club at Queensferry in North Wales. The graffiti on the dressing-room walls was a masterpiece. Like an obscene version of the Sistine Chapel, every square inch was covered with cocks, fannies and filthy comments. As for the sink, it was full of piss. And there was dog shit on the floor. I’ve never forgotten the smell. It stank worse than anywhere I’ve ever been. I only wish I’d had a camera at the time because it would have made an ideal photograph to show how I started. The toilets were cleaner than the dressing room.

The worst night I ever had in that period was so bad it ended up on the front page of a newspaper. I’d been booked to play a stag night at the Dial House, one of the largest clubs in Sheffield, with Dennis Beard, a magician, and four strippers. If someone had told me that Tommy Cooper had pinched his entire act from Dennis, I wouldn’t have been at all surprised. Born at the turn of the twentieth century, Dennis had a wrinkly little face, always wore a fez and specialised in magic tricks that went comically wrong.

Word had got around that Chubby Brown was on and by the early 1980s I had a bit of a reputation, so the tickets sold out in four hours. But about a hundred tickets had been sold to people from Rotherham, most of whom turned up in football strips to rile all the Sheffielders. Daggers were drawn before the show started. By the time the first stripper came on at about nine o’clock, most of the crowd were on their fourth or fifth pint. It didn’t take long for a fight to break out. I stepped out of my dressing room and peered out from behind the stage curtains to see chairs, tables and glasses flying through the air as about forty Rotherham supporters took on about eighty Sheffield fans.

It was like a western, when a fight breaks out in the saloon and everything gets smashed – the furniture, the bottles of drink,
the glasses and the mirrors on the walls. I could see that the action might put my eye out and I could hear police dogs barking, so I decided not to venture out from behind the stage. After about an hour, the police carted the fighters off in police vans and the girls got dressed. Emerging at last from the dressing room, I found a bloke with blood on his white shirt standing in a room that looked like a sawdust factory.

‘Committee man?’ I said.

He nodded. ‘Steward.’

‘Eh, what was all that about?’

‘They sold the tickets to the wrong people, man.’

‘That’s
some
damage you got here.’

‘I’m not bothered,’ said the steward, opening up the palm of his hand. He was holding four solid gold chains, about half a dozen rings and a thick wad of money. ‘I’ve just picked that up off the floor. It’ll pay for some of it.’

In spite of having absolutely nothing to do with it, I was blamed for the fight.
Geordie Comic Incites Riot
said the headline in the Sheffield evening paper the next day. I don’t know what the biggest insult was – calling me a Geordie when I’m a Yorkshireman or blaming me for sommat that had nowt to do with me.

On 3 April 1982, Brian Findlay phoned me. It was a Saturday night and Brian wanted to know if I was going to pick him up the next day on the way to playing a club he’d booked me into in Thornaby. I agreed to pick him up from a little caravan he kept at Hutton Sessay, about twenty miles from York. The next morning, I got a phone call from Brian’s wife, Rita. Brian had been making a bacon sandwich at about ten o’clock that morning when he’d had a massive heart attack. He was only forty-eight.

After Brian’s funeral, Rita tried to take over his talent agency, but she didn’t have a business brain and all the acts suffered. There was no work coming in and when she did get work for
her clients the money was terrible because Rita was too nice to demand a decent fee for her acts.

I needed to find a new agent and remembered meeting George Forster shortly after Louvane’s death in Malta. I put on a blue suit and made an appointment to see him at his office at Chester-le-Street. Everyone I spoke to in show business advised me to keep away from George who, as the son of a Geordie docker, had a reputation as an unpleasantly hard man.